Attacks on Google suggest it is winning
You can look at Google's growing market share in Android, its dominance in search, and elsewhere as signs that it's winning in its markets. But for me, the best indicator that Google is winning is the increasingly vitriolic attacks piled on it.
You want a piece of me?
You can always spot a winner by the bull's-eye painted on it. No one bothers to diss a loser.
Or sue them. Red Bend Software has launched what appears to be a specious patent claim against Google, alleging that Google's Chrome browser violates its patent (6,546,552) by including the Courgette algorithm, which enables Google to push compressed software updates to the browser.
As Microsoft learned years ago, success breeds patent lawsuits. Microsoft rarely sues over intellectual property infringement, but has endured hundreds of patent lawsuits, nearly all of them ultimately found worthless.
But it's not just patent trolls that are on the scent. Symbian, the one-time leader in mobile phone operating systems, has gone on the offensive, claiming Google is "evil" and fear-mongering about what Google will do with consumer data gathered with its Android software.
Is this an indication that Symbian can't compete in the market and must instead resort to FUD?
Google may ultimately be able to get out of the Red Bend lawsuit cheaply, and it's unlikely that Symbian's noise will unduly distract it. It may not end up dominating mobile, for a variety of reasons, but it's going to be a significant competitor, just as it is in search and increasingly in enterprise computing.
After all, Google is innovating in Android, as CNET reports, and generally pushing the envelope on what's possible in computing: mobile, "desktop," and cloud/server. Importantly, open source is a central strategy in each of these areas, which may be one of the things that most riles the incumbent competitors in its markets.
For Google, the increasing vehemence of the attacks on it should signal that it's doing something right. In fact, many "somethings" right.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
What they will do is completely reshape the way software and services are delivered as it becomes less and less likely that any one will pay for subscription based services when Google has trained us it should all come for free with little ads placed everywhere. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest.
One word: Privacy
To be perfectly honest, i'm perfectly happy giving Google my data. After all, as Myles said, what would Google do with it? The amount they get, my data isn't going to be worth a jot to them if they try to do something i wouldn't wish them to do with it :)
I expect that Apple already understands this and are getting ready to deploy the next big thing (possibly a slate) in the very near future. This is going to turn into one of the biggest rivalries the computer industry has ever seen.
I've enjoyed a lot of Dilger's commentary at Roughly Drafted about this whole tussle, but lately, even his arguments have been getting a bit thin vis-a-vis the Android vs. iPhone angle. He still makes some solid points, but Android is still growing in spite of them. I believe though that Android is getting most of its growth not from the iPhone, but from someone else.
Now whether Android will continue to grow, and who it steals most of its marketshare from? Dunno. I'm guessing that Android will cannibalize Symbian more than anyone else - the iPhone brand is still too strong (and growing), RIM is still too entrenched in business, and Windows Mobile is now too small (and still shrinking) to be considered as fertile territory to swipe marketshare from.
This leaves Symbian/Nokia, which has incidentally been the loudest and longest detractor of Android/Google lately... and Symbian is, while still capable (and now open source), getting its lunch eaten and its girlfriends stolen by Google, Apple, and RIM.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10384839-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
I also like how the author is so threatened by Apple that he dosent even mention Apple in this article about "Google winning the war"
My beagle at that phone, so the 2nd coolest phone is the iPhone. At least Visual Voicemail is useful. But the last thing my phone does any more is place & receive calls. Social networking has replaced my phone.
So, all this leads me to conclude that competition is a good thing. I welcome the Droid phone. I hope it drives Apple to make a better iPhone--and Symbian too.
- by chilabot October 29, 2009 1:49 PM PDT
- Dead to software patents.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)